


Battlezone

by grinandsin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:49:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grinandsin/pseuds/grinandsin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lydia is ice and Allison is fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battlezone

Lydia is in a battle zone with a fearless girl named Allison Argent and she thinks that’s a mesmerizing name, but she won’t tell the girl she’s fascinating, because she’s only just met this girl and doesn’t know if she’s fascinating yet.  


 _No_ , Lydia won’t tell her anything, she’ll continue to be inconspicuous about her captivation like sunlight forgotten under everlasting fog.  


The lights on the runway catch the girl’s bright brown eyes and make them shine with a sparkle that makes Lydia wonder if they hold the secret to survival. They keep Lydia’s interest better than the bugs walking over her battered boot, or even more than the words Lydia’s Staff Sergeant is tossing to the Afghan wind as she introduces Lydia to a new member of her squad.  


Lydia’s in a battle zone with a fearless girl, and she will slowly discover that her excitement encases a serious core, that she will pull everyone around her into her orbit and keep them safe, win them over with her connection to reality, her fountain of distractions, her ease, her willingness, her _determination_ to not be weak.  


But right now, Lydia can only try to remember what if feels like to be as carefree and happy as this girl that the world has sent to die with her.  


+  


Lydia is in a battle zone with a fearless girl named Allison, but Lydia won’t tell her anything for weeks, because every time Lydia looks at her she thinks of the fire in her eyes, the crunch of a boot in the quiet part of a jungle, the soft and constant tick of a bomb, the soft almond scent of C4, the thoughts in her head that seem to whisper ‘ _this one’s yours so start fighting for something, keep her safe_ ’.  


She knows one of them will die first.  


And Lydia just hopes it’s her.

+

Lydia watches her live, grow, adapt, _harden_. She smiles less, but Lydia counts each one as a blessing when Allison starts to slot into Lydia’s unit, Lydia’s circle, and around the people Lydia chooses to surround and protect with a rain of bullets.  


Allison’s passionate, young, and loud, like the radio that has too much static but Lydia can’t bring herself to turn it off yet because it’s still better than the deafening silence. She’s goofy and deadly and a match to the team’s needs. It’s an awkward fit at times, because Lydia can’t keep her eyes off her, but she can feel that this is essential, this is serious, this is _important_.

+

Lydia watches her, teammate, comrade, friend, lover, everything, nothing. They are becoming comfortable and warm like Allison’s soft touch on Lydia’s neck or Lydia’s twist of Allison’s hair. During one night that they’re forced to sleep on the kitchen floor of a safe house, Lydia shares a sleeping bag with Allison’s body and listens to the rain, painting lines down Allison’s bright face.  


Lydia always wants to reach out and touch Allison’s face, remind herself that this is real, like her red shirt, her red blood, red lips, red heart. She wants to touch her warmth and bury herself in it, but Lydia is frightened of the things she cannot yet put into words.

 _I’m here_ , Lydia could say, and, _I’m always icy, and you burn so hot_. 

Lydia could trust her, could touch her, could _tell_ her.  


But she won’t.  


Yet.

+

Lydia’s a sniper, and Allison acts as a barrier every time she glimpses through her scope, their eyes always locking across the distance.  


 _Allison is like the sun_ , she thinks, _except even more important because all the sun does is block the sand and paint shadows on their targets, while Allison sets fire to the sand – burns holes in those same targets simply from her radiance_.  


Important is the way Allison starts to look at Lydia, like Lydia might just be the moon to her sun. Important is the way Lydia can’t fucking breathe when Allison starts to pick at her like a bug under a microscope. One wrong move will shatter everything, and the moment will be nothing more than crystalline slivers that never fit together again, but they keep at it, they stick together, they risk it all.

+

Lydia is a bomb. Lydia is nightmares, violence, secrets, and defenses that won’t let out a sound. Lydia is explosive, tired, _real_. Lydia shakes sometimes, other times she screams. Lydia thinks everything will burn, like a sauna, a torch, a ghost of a bite to the inside of Lydia’s thigh.

And she thinks it will be Allison that lights the match.

Lydia is in a battle zone with a fearless girl, but Lydia won’t tell her Lydia wants her, because she’s slipped under her barricade and may just light Lydia’s fuse, if Lydia tempts her, if she tempts Lydia.

+

Lydia’s a sniper, and this is her job, her calling, her _life_ , and she’ll give it everything she has except Allison.  


One of them will still die first.

+

Lydia watches Allison live, grow, and curve around Lydia’s back like an afterthought, something striking but maybe not significant, maybe _too_ significant. She is warm, and Lydia is not – never has been, never intends to be.

Lydia opens her mouth to say _‘I love you’_ , or _‘you’re my best friend’_ or maybe _‘I’ll always keep your safe’_ but she can’t get them out, she’s lost her words again. She can’t breathe, and she damn sure can’t remember the last time she felt like this.

+

Allison’s here, she’s here, and she’s an inferno. She melts Lydia’s skin, melts Lydia’s steel, melts Lydia bullets until Lydia can’t tell where Allison begins and she ends. She begins and Lydia ends. Lydia always ends.

She cloaks Lydia in her words and touches Lydia’s face, Lydia’s lips, and Lydia’s core until they are twined, tight, and true. 

Lydia captures her bright brown eyes, coats her soft dark hair in Lydia’s protection. Lydia stitches her pink skin to keep the horrors away, the terrors that come with too much innocence, too much love underneath. She shares it with Lydia: the terrors, the love, the vibrancy that comes from joy and candy bars and codes and lingering kisses in the first hot shower they’ve had in weeks.

Lydia reaches out her calloused fingers, calloused heart, calloused words, but Allison stays at Lydia’s back, open like a book, like a church, like a smile pressed into Lydia shoulder blade, burning its likeness into Lydia skin until Lydia can’t forget the way it feels, but she still offers to do it again. 

+

Lydia is vulnerability and trust relayed as stories in the dark, fingers spelling out secrets on her heated skin. She forgets she is a bomb, forgets Allison is a barrier, forget the dangers of the past, the dangers of the job, the dangers of letting her slip into Lydia’s unit, Lydia’s bed, Lydia’s body.  


Allison is soft smiles, soft looks, and softer touches. Lydia is the cool breeze on a Mexican beach, the cool relief of time on leave, away from the battlefield, away from restrictions, _away_.  


Allison is freedom and harmony. Allison is steady, an inhale, and an exhale. Allison is laughter and card games and dreamless sleep.  


Allison just _is_.

+

Lydia’s at the Pass when the smoke chokes out her breath, chokes out the stars, like ink spreading across diligently written letters. Lydia cannot see past the nothing in front of her. She cannot see if the fire is engulfing her, tearing Allison apart from the inside out. Allison’s skin blisters, Lydia eyes water, turning everything gray, blurred, twisted, dead, dead, _dead_. 

Lydia can see Allison burning too bright, too fast. She’s a wildfire with no direction, no purpose. The ash burns her eyes, and Lydia knows her fire’s putting itself out, smothered with damp leaves and heavy boots and a disembodied voice giving them the order to let children die, giving someone else the order to make them die.

 _I’m here_ , Lydia could say, and, _I’m always icy, and you burn so hot_. 

Lydia can’t breathe.

+

Allison’s here.  


Allison’s here.  


Lydia isn’t sure she’s really here.

+

Lydia’s a sniper, and Allison’s a barrier, a wall, a treacherous fortress of steel, sweat, and scores to settle. Lydia’s cold and solid, a trap waiting to spring, a line of bullets strung from a rooftop to a man’s heart, like a line of pearls, like a gift, like grief wrapped in itchy blankets and the stench of death.

Lydia’s fearless girl doesn’t tell Lydia she loves her, but she does and they both know it. She doesn’t tell Lydia it isn’t Lydia fault, that the world isn’t only sunlight buried under perpetual gray. 

She offers her love with her presence, her diligence, the slide of a pale hand around Lydia’s wrist until Lydia can’t see the scars they both know are there. 

Lydia can only smell the smoke.

+

Lydia thinks she will be the death of her because Lydia is just a gravestone with no name, a shovel for a casket without a body. 

Lydia isn’t the safety of a fortress. Lydia is the isolation, the loneliness, a blizzard that buries children to their throats, a lake that will freeze over her head if Lydia dares step in. It’s a festering wound to the gut, only Lydia can’t feel the extremities, Lydia can’t feel her enemies, all Lydia feels is cold, so cold it burns.

One of them will die first.

More importantly, one of them will die last.

+

Lydia is in a battle zone with a fearless girl, but Lydia won’t tell her Lydia wants her as Lydia clings to her, clings to her life, because Lydia doesn’t deserve her. She’s cold from the sea air, cold and shaking with adrenaline and fear and endurance, and she doesn’t deserve anyone as warm as Allison.

Lydia pulls back, put space where there shouldn’t be any, where there hasn’t been any for months, years, countless sleepless nights in dank motel rooms. 

Lydia pulls back, listens to another section of her barricade crumble without a sound.

+

Lydia’s a bomb, a missile, a heartbreak, an afterthought. Lydia is violence and anger and hatred. Lydia is calculation, patience, and silence.  


Allison is nights in Siberia when the watchman wakes Lydia every thirty minutes to make sure she can still wake at all. Lydia is vengeance and obsession measured in the tick of her heart, the tick of her trigger, the tick of the bomb counting down to double-zeros, counting down to the silence, counting down to something Lydia can’t begin to understand – something as wretched as Allison dying before Lydia.

+

Lydia is in a battle zone with a fearless girl, but Lydia won’t tell her she wants her, because she already knows it – knows it like a psalm, a ritual, a finger tracing Lydia scars in the heat of night until Lydia is open and vulnerable. Allison knows Lydia is happiness, love, sisterhood, silence, everything, nothing.

Lydia is cold and tired and Lydia feels like she has nothing left to give. But Lydia has to touch this broken, barbed, fearless woman one more time, because she has been consumed, her barricade has crumbled to pebbles that are still sharp and bloody. Lydia is vulnerable and ruined, a bleak field where a grand fortress once offered protection and refuge. 

Lydia looks in her eyes, muted but still brown, and she can’t breathe at the warmth that still entwines with her skin in a spring rain shower, the touch of the Arctic sun, the first time she smiled at Lydia and all Lydia could see was her death. 

The fire has been simmering, but Lydia has broken Allison until she’s bright with anger, fear, love, the infectious determination to show the world her fire even if it means lifetimes of pain and punishment and penance.

 _I’m here_ , Lydia could say, and, _I’m always icy, and you burn so hot_. 

_The world needs to burn, but I’m afraid you’ll catch yourself ablaze_ , she could say.

Or maybe, _you don’t really need my protection because you’re a warrior on your own_.

Allison cloaks Lydia in her warmth and touches her face, her arm, her hair, her entire existence. Lydia remembers how they fit, how she thaws, how she is in her strongest moments. Lydia struggles for words, struggles for breath, struggles for something she can’t understand, but it’s real and important and just beyond Lydia’s bloody fingertips.

It’s like something Lydia can’t define, like importance, like everything, like nothing, like _enough_.

**Author's Note:**

>  **a/n:** in case you're wondering, no one actually died in this fic. lydia constantly worried over the fact that one of them would, but in the end all that happened was lydia came to the realization that allison's capable of handling herself and doesn't need lydia's protection.
> 
> that's it, that's the story.


End file.
